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Serendipity

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For other uses, see Serendipity (disambiguation).
The photo intended was solely of a Black-crowned Night Heron; the photographer was unaware of the Pileated Woodpecker flashing through initially, hence it is also a photobomb.

Serendipity means a "fortuitous happenstance" or "pleasant surprise". It was first coined by Horace Walpole in 1754. In a letter he wrote to a friend Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made by reference to a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. The princes, he told his correspondent, were “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of”.

The notion of serendipity is a common occurrence throughout the history of scientific innovation such as Alexander Fleming's accidental discovery of penicillin in 1928, and the invention of the microwave oven by Percy Spencer in 1945, to name but a few.

The word has been voted one of the ten English words hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company.[1] However, due to its sociological use, the word has been exported into many other languages.[2]

Etymology

The first noted use of "serendipity" in the English language was by Horace Walpole (1717–1797). In a letter to Horace Mann (dated 28 January 1754) he said he formed it from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of". The name stems from Serendip, an old name for Sri Lanka (aka Ceylon), from Sanskrit Simhaladvipa and Persian Sarandīp (سرندیپ). Parts of Sri Lanka were under the rule of South Indian kings for extended periods of time in history. Kings of Tamil Nadu, India (Cheranadu) were called Chera Kings and dheep means island, the island belonging to Chera King was called Cherandeep, hence called Sarandib by Arab traders.[3]

Science and technology

Main article: Role of chance in scientific discoveries

Various thinkers discuss the role that luck can play in science. One aspect of Walpole's original definition of serendipity, often missed in modern discussions of the word, is the need for an individual to be "sagacious" enough to link together apparently innocuous facts in order to come to a valuable conclusion. Indeed, the scientific method, and the scientists themselves, can be prepared in many other ways to harness luck and make discoveries.

Business and strategy

M. E. Graebner describes serendipitous value in the context of the acquisition of a business as "windfalls that were not anticipated by the buyer prior to the deal": i.e., unexpected advantages or benefits incurred due to positive synergy effects of the merger.[citation needed] Ikujiro Nonaka[4] points out that the serendipitous quality of innovation is highly recognized by managers and links the success of Japanese enterprises to their ability to create knowledge not by processing information but rather by "tapping the tacit and often highly subjective insights, intuitions, and hunches of individual employees and making those insights available for testing and use by the company as a whole".

Serendipity is postulated by Napier and Vuong (2013) as a 'strategic advantage' with which a firm can tap its potential creativity.[5]

Serendipity is a key concept in competitive intelligence because it is one of the tools for avoiding blind spots (see Blindspots analysis).[6][clarification needed]

Uses

Serendipity is used as a sociological method in Anselm L. Strauss' and Barney G. Glaser's Grounded Theory, building on ideas by sociologist Robert K. Merton, who in Social Theory and Social Structure (1949) referred to the "serendipity pattern" as the fairly common experience of observing an unanticipated, anomalous and strategic datum which becomes the occasion for developing a new theory or for extending an existing theory. Robert K. Merton also coauthored (with Elinor Barber) The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity[7] which traces the origins and uses of the word "serendipity" since it was coined. The book is "a study in sociological semantics and the sociology of science", as the subtitle of the book declares. It further develops the idea of serendipity as scientific "method" (as juxtaposed with purposeful discovery by experiment or retrospective prophecy).

William Boyd coined the term zemblanity to mean somewhat the opposite of serendipity: "making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries occurring by design".[8] A zemblanity is, effectively, an "unpleasant unsurprise". It derives from Novaya Zemlya (or Nova Zembla), a cold, barren land with many features opposite to the lush Sri Lanka (Serendip). On this island Willem Barents and his crew were stranded while searching for a new route to the east.

Bahramdipity is derived directly from Bahram Gur as characterized in the "The Three Princes of Serendip". It describes the suppression of serendipitous discoveries or research results by powerful individuals.[9]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Words hardest to translate – The list by Today Translations. Also defined in modern times as "An unexpected discovery occurring by design". Unkown reference updated on 12/14/2014 by Isaac Lucero, Santa Fe, NM USA". Global Oneness. 21 April 2009.
  2. ^ For example: Portuguese serendipicidade or serendipidade; French sérendipicité or sérendipité but also heureux hasard, "fortunate chance"; Italian serendipità (Italian Dictionary Hoepli, cfr.); Dutch serendipiteit; German Serendipität; Japanese serendipiti (セレンディピティ); Swedish, Danish and Norwegian serendipitet; Romanian serendipitate; Spanish serendipia, Polish: Serendypność; Finnish serendipiteetti
  3. ^ Barber, Robert K. Merton, Elinor (2006). The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity : A Study in Sociological Semantics and the Sociology of Science (Paperback ed. ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. 1–3. ISBN 0691126305. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ 1991, p. 94 November–December issue of Harvard Business Review
  5. ^ Napier, Nancy K., and Vuong Quan Hoang. "Serendipity as a strategic advantage?." Strategic Management in the 21st Century; edited by Timothy J. Wilkinson., 2013, 1, 175–199.
  6. ^ Serendipity in Competitive Intelligence by Yves-Michel Marti, Egideria[dead link‍]
  7. ^ Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003
  8. ^ Boyd, William. Armadillo, Chapter 12, Knopf, New York, 1998. ISBN 0-375-40223-3
  9. ^ (a) Sommer, Toby J. "'Bahramdipity' and Scientific Research", The Scientist, 1999, 13(3), 13.
    (b) Sommer, Toby J. "Bahramdipity and Nulltiple Scientific Discoveries," Science and Engineering Ethics, 2001, 7(1), 77–104.

References

  • "The view from Serendip", by Arthur C. Clarke, Random House, 1977.
  • "Momentum and Serendipity: how acquired leaders create value in the integration of technology firms", by Melissa E. Graebner, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, U.S.A. 2004.
  • Serendipity is also a popular Feed the beast & Technic server, Feed the beast is a modpack of the game Minecraft. The owner tubby is frequently plagued by zemblanity.

Further reading

  • Remer, Theodore G., ed. (1965). Serendipity and the Three Princes, from the Peregrinaggio of 1557. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Theodore G. Remer. Preface by W. S. Lewis. University of Oklahoma Press. LCC 65-10112
  • Merton, Robert K.; Barber, Elinor (2004). The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: A Study in Sociological Semantics and the Sociology of Science. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-11754-3. (Manuscript written 1958).
  • Hannan, Patrick J. (2006). Serendipity, Luck and Wisdom in Research. iUniverse. ISBN 0-595-36551-5.
  • Roberts, Royston M. (1989). Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-60203-5.
  • Andel, Pek Van (1994). "Anatomy of the unsought finding : serendipity: origin, history, domains, traditions, appearances, patterns and programmability". British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 45 (2): 631–648. doi:10.1093/bjps/45.2.631.
  • Gaughan, Richard (2010). Accidental Genius: The World's Greatest By-Chance Discoveries. Metro Books. ISBN 978-1-4351-2557-5.
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